The We Help Everyone Live Longer (WHELL) Clinic, pronounced “well”, teen advisory board recently traveled to Albuquerque N.M. to attend the national conference of school based health centers.

The WHELL Clinic is a school based health center. It is located inside LHS and provides medical care and services to students similar to any other medical clinic except school based health centers cater to students. At the Lamar WHELL Clinic students are not charged a co-pay and their insurance is billed for the services.

WHELL Clinic Director Amy Hobbs described the benefits of school based health centers explaining how it allows students to go to a health appointment without requiring their parents leave work or students take off from school. Hobbs said, “The WHELL Clinic is convenient, easy, and confidential.”

The WHELL Clinic maintains a teen advisory board made up of LHS students who act as advocates for the program while also performing certain volunteer activities away from school, such as picking up litter in the nature walk behind LCC. Four members of the teen advisory board traveled with Hobbs to Albuquerque for the national conference. Candice Ybarra, Monserrat Gallegos, Jesus Esparza, and Laura Rueda all traveled to Albuquerque to participate in the “Youth” track of the conference which provided a different set of seminars and workshops as opposed to the “Adult” track.

This was only the third year the national conference has had a “Youth” track. Teen Advisory Board member Laura Rueda said, “The highlight for me was seeing how many people want to get involved and improve the clinics. I didn’t realize all the work that goes into it. It was amazing to see all the adults and students working together.” Jesus Esparza echoed her sentiments saying, “It’s good to know no matter what you are advocating there are people there to help you.”

The conference was held in late June. The students traveled down to Albuquerque by train aboard the Southwest Chief. Traveling with the students were two adult advisors, WHELL Clinic director Amy Hobbs and Karl Nieschburg.

At the conference in the “Youth” track the students attended seminars and workshops presented by various people focusing mostly on student advocacy for school based health clinics. Several of the advocacy seminars focused on using social media such as Facebook to expand the reach of student voices. The WHELL Clinic plans to have their own Facebook page up and running shortly.

The students also went on a site visit to Laguna Pueblo to see a school with a more advanced school based health clinic. The students also attended a workshop put on by other students from N.C. Ironically these students who put on the clinic and had according to Rueda and Esparza, “a lot of great idea,” have no actual school based health clinic where they are from in N.C.

The WHELL Clinic teen advisory board is already looking towards next school year. Next year the board hopes to recruit new younger members since all the current members of the advisory board will be seniors during the next school year and will graduate in 2013. Also they plan to hold several fundraisers to cover costs to be able to attend the national conference next summer, which is to be held in Washington D.C.